By Sarah Griffiths — dailymail.co.uk
It might resemble the giant exoskeleton as seen in the James Cameron film Avatar, but this terrifying-looking machine of the future is set to become a reality.
A team of Canadian engineers and innovators are working on creating a giant human-controlled walking ‘anti-robot’ called Prosthesis, which is being built ‘by humans, for humans’.
Written By: Cameron Scott — Singularity Hub
Back when Google was first getting started, there were plenty of skeptics who didn’t think a list of links could ever turn a profit. That was before advertising came along and gave Google a way to pay its bills — and then some, as it turned out. Thanks in part to that fortuitous accident, in today’s Internet market, advertising isn’t just an also-ran with new technologies: Marketers are bending innovation to their needs as startups chase prospective revenue streams.
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Humanity+ members will be speaking at an exciting San Francisco East Bay transhumanist conference on March 1, that fans of Hplus should consider attending. Chairman Natasha Vita-More is a keynote speaker (along with her husband Max More) and recent HumanityPlus Board member Linda M. Glenn is also in the illustrious lineup. HumanityPlus is also co-sponsoring the event.
Posted in lifeboat, nanotechnology, science, space, space travel, transportation
We have been using the same propellant system for rockets since the Chinese fire arrows in 1000 A.D. A gas is expanded in a tube to generate force. Enough gas and force and you can break the bonds of the earth.
From gunpowder to liquid propellants to solid rocket boosters, nothing except size and volume has changed.
New proposed systems such as nuclear engines, magnetic rail guns, ion engines are all options that have not been shown to be functional at this point in time.
Our popular fantasy TV and movies all have some unspecified, powerful propulsion system that can easily break our gravity well to send us to outer space.
It takes energy to get lift and higher energy systems generate more lift, but as you move up the periodic table, you have waste products that are toxic downstream from the output.
Sure, di-lithium crystals are wonderful and the “boop-boop-boop” of the Jetson’s car are bound to be a huge source of cheap, safe, unlimited power, someday, in some future time, maybe.
We have the materials available now to bring cheap, effective access to space for more than the rich or lucky.
Helium and hydrogen and, of course, hot air has been used for a number of years to take sensors and toys to the upper atmosphere.
When the atmospheric pressure is decreased below the tensile strength of the shell, the balloon bursts and the device plummets to earth.
With a few modifications, such as nanoparticle bonded fabric, we can take a balloon system to the next level.
Using Hydrogen for lift (careful, explosive), take the system to the upper reaches. When the balloon ascent stops, pump in oxygen (from on-board cylinders) and fire off a small rocket engine.
With enough boost, the empty shell can be switched to solar sail to take the payload anywhere you want.
Of course, this is a radical, untested system, but if it works, it could open up space flight to the rest of the world and we can start mining the di-lithium crystals our movies tell us will replace all other propulsion systems.
more @ www.h2liftship.com
Last week, PayPal President David Marcus tweeted “To clarify: we have no policies against using PayPal to sell Bitcoin mining rigs. We don’t support any currency txn whether fiat or BTC… for a host of regulatory issues. But we treat BTC and any FX txn the same way. We’re believers in BTC though.”
You may have noticed we have a soft spot for sci-fi author Isaac Asimov. His fiction, especially as it pertains to robotics, cemented him in the sci-fi canon and advanced the thinking on what practical robotics would look like in the future.
He also used his fiction to entertain a foreboding question: Should a robot be able to kill a human?
Asimov decided not, and drew up three “laws of robotics” that governed how robots behaved in his fictional universes.
By John Frank Weaver — Slate
Harvey Milk famously advised his “gay brothers and sisters” to come out, but “only to the people you know, and who know you.” He understood the power of human empathy. It is hard to hate people you know and who know you.
We’ll soon see how human empathy shapes the design of artificial intelligence because, as it turns out, our empathy is so strong we will consider objects people if we can interact with them like people. Her played with this idea in a future where Joaquin Phoenix’s Theodore falls in love with his operating system, Samantha. But right now on Indiegogo, you can contribute to EmoSPARK, “the first artificial intelligence console committed to your happiness.”
John A. Rogers, University of Illinois
Fitness buffs are going gaga for gadgets like the Fitbit Flex and Jawbone UP — for now. Although the stylish rubber bracelets can monitor heart rate, sleep patterns and other vital signs, and even display them on a smartphone, John Rogers thinks wearable health can do better.
Today’s often clunky self-health trackers are “just hanging there,” said Rogers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a result, they only measure a handful of biological functions. “We want to go for more sophisticated, clinical quality measurements in ordinary daily life. Being intimately in contact with the skin is the only way to do it.”
The Economist
IN 1930, when the world was “suffering…from a bad attack of economic pessimism”, John Maynard Keynes wrote a broadly optimistic essay, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”. It imagined a middle way between revolution and stagnation that would leave the said grandchildren a great deal richer than their grandparents. But the path was not without dangers.
One of the worries Keynes admitted was a “new disease”: “technological unemployment…due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.” His readers might not have heard of the problem, he suggested—but they were certain to hear a lot more about it in the years to come.